


Quiet

by siriuslygrednforge



Category: Hannibal - Fandom
Genre: Gen, freddo getting all sad and emo in the hospital
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-30
Updated: 2016-03-30
Packaged: 2018-05-30 02:33:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6405166
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/siriuslygrednforge/pseuds/siriuslygrednforge
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Part of the ABC of Chilton series organized on Tumblr. I got the letter 'Q' and this is what I came up with. Basically Frederick coming to terms with his loneliness, kind of.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Quiet

He hated the quiet. He hated Abel Gideon, he hated the FBI, he hated his bad luck. But most of all, Frederick hated the quiet. He hated feeling lonely. He hated the thought of acknowledging that this was all his fault – that he had brought this upon himself.

Convincing Abel Gideon that he was the Chesapeake Ripper, getting all the fame and glory he wanted for having the Ripper in his hospital; the plan was simple. He didn’t know what went wrong .

 

“Bloom. It must have been her” he thought, lying on the bed in an empty hospital room.

 

There had been no visitors that day. No colleagues, no family. No one. The only person who had come to see him that day was the nurse, who only checked on him and left in two minutes. His stomach hurt, he felt empty on the inside, which was obvious considering the last thing he clearly remembered was Abel Gideon’s smug face and a kidney in hand. _His_ kidney.

Frederick wanted to get up and go to the bathroom. He had had frequent trips to the loo that day and There was no bedpan and the nurse wasn’t around. Frederick felt a sharp pain in his lower back as he got up, clutching the edge of the bed tightly. He tried holding on the wall and door for support, walking slowly as he got out of the room. Only to regret doing that.

 

He saw families visiting their loved ones, people looking elated, people looking distressed with worry etched on their faces. Concern and relief and pain and support; he could see and hear it all in the hallway. But he would never feel that. As if the pain in his back wasn’t enough, he had to feel the pain of his lonely existence as well. Fortunately for him, one of the hospital interns spotted him and took him back inside, motioning a nurse to fetch the bedpan.

For the first in ages, Frederick felt lonely. He didn’t care about it earlier; he coped by splurging on things to fill the emptiness in his life. But now, he just wished for someone to be beside him. If not family, at least colleagues. He had a feeling Freddie Lounds would come by pay him a visit, probably looking for a story. Though she herself was present there, holding the device that kept him alive while Gideon fiddled around with his organs. Maybe she won’t turn up.

 

He hated the quiet.

 

***

 

He hated the quiet. He hated Hannibal Lecter. He hated the FBI. He hated Will Graham for calling Jack Crawford. He hated Jack Crawford for not listening to him. He hated his bad luck. He hated seeing Abel Gideon’s half-eaten body in his guest room. He hated the fact that he won’t be able to go home, the one place where he felt safe, in fear of revisiting the horrors of the day Lecter framed him for the Ripper’s murders. He hated the fact that like last year, this year too was being spent lying alone in a hospital room. But most of all, he hated the quiet.

It had been a week since he was shot in the face in the FBI interrogation window.

 

“Why not Bloom, why me?” he thought as he struggled to lie still on the bed, thinking about how she was sitting right opposite him and yet he was the one who got shot and not her. He wanted to lie on his side but that would have upset the bullet wound his face had sustained.

 

He had told them many times, warned them all about Lecter’s truth but they all blatantly ignored him. The signs were there – the murders, Lecter simultaneously throwing dinner parties. 

 

Then again, the signs _were there_ – Lecter becoming a bit too friendly with him, inviting him over for drinks and dinners to discuss their unethical practices. Frederick  was blind in seeing that. 

And he thought he was so smart.

 

Jack Crawford had come to visit him the previous day. Though it was more of a ‘I’m-sorry-here-have-a-bouquet’ kind of a visit. Frederick just nodded, being unable to speak with his jaw being damaged thanks to the sheer force of the bullet colliding with it. Losing half his face and an eye, yet he was still alive.

 

Nobody else bothered to visit. Maybe because they were busy with Hannibal. 

 _Hannibal, Hannibal, Hannibal_.

 Always Hannibal Lecter.

 

Frederick had always hated the man. Lecter had everything – brains, the fame, but most importantly, friends. People who gave a shit about him, even though they were oblivious to the fact that they were friends with a psychopathic murderer, also known as the Chesapeake Ripper. Frederick was one of those people too, thinking that maybe he and Lecter were friends who understood each other’s unethical practices. Frederick hated him even more now, thinking about how he betrayed him and framed for crimes that were committed by him.

 

Who knows, Lecter would have visitors even after getting incarcerated for his crimes, he thought. 

But me, I will have to deal with the quiet.

 

***

 

He hated his luck. He hated the fact that he had been spending a greater part of his life in hospitals as a patient rather than a doctor. He hated the fact that after this shitstorm was over, he would look like Frankenstein’s monster, patchy skin and all that jazz. He hated that murderous lunatic who called himself the Great Red Dragon. He hated the FBI for not providing him with proper security. He hated Freddie Lounds and her cheap tabloid. He hated Will Graham and Alana Bloom for setting him up. He hated Jack Crawford for allowing this to happen. But for once in his life, Frederick didn’t hate the quiet.

Visitors had been flitting in and out of his room. It had been reporters, the FBI, his editor, his secretary Linda, Jack Crawford, Will Graham and even, Alana Bloom herself.

 

“Damn you, Bloom” he muttered under his breath as he lied in the hyperbaric chamber designed to keep his wounds clean and free from any infection, thinking about how she could have helped Graham and Crawford with their plan to apprehend the Dragon, but put him up for the job instead.

 

Freddie Lounds had come by, strangely with a bouquet in her hand instead of a journal. She looked distraught, strangely guilty. As if she felt responsible for what had happened to him; she wasn’t wrong. He remembered the day Will Graham had come to visit him. Frederick was trashed and Graham couldn’t even look him in the eye, managing to stutter out a half-assed apology. He knew Graham didn’t mean it: none of those people meant what they said when they came to meet him.

 

Frederick had grown used to the fact that people never cared about him, they only needed him when they needed something. He was tired of being someone’s patsy, a pet. He wanted to be left alone, away from all these people who called him his friends, colleagues or for that matter, well wishers.  He didn’t need these people and their messages of speedy recoveries and their bouquets and cakes.

 

He needed the silence he was scared of all his life. He had gotten so used to that, even the cold feeling of being lonely felt like a warm embrace. The more he saw people meet him, the more terrible and worthless he felt. They made him feel like he was just an object of the ‘use and throw’ kind. He knew he would be needed again for some dumb reason next year, which would land him in his second home, the hospital, again. But he didn’t need to think that.

 

For now he just wanted to be alone, left to recover, to plot whatever hell he was going to unleash on the people who kept making a joke out of him every year and at the same time, literally destroying a part of his body.

For the first time in his life, Frederick craved for the quiet.


End file.
